Management and Leadership

Highlights 

• We spoke with Paul Soglin, JD, about public management. He shared his experiences with Harambe, a clinic and education center that provided access and trust to a previously marginalized community in Madison.   
• Fellows took a leadership type inventory and discussed findings with Linda Heisler, Division of Health Services Training Director. 
• Mary Young and Lieske Giese of the Division of Health Services Regional Offices spoke about the differences between leaders and managers.

Health Disparities and Social Justice Conference: A Focus on Women’s Health

Inspired by a recent Fellow meeting on the topic, Fellow Katarina Grande attended a social justice-themed conference hosted by DePaul University. Here’s her review of the event:

Session highlights:

Collaborating to reduce health disparities among African American women: A Community-Based Participatory Research workshop

I attended this session because I work with an African American community advisory board that utilizes components of community-based participatory research (CBPR). This talk showcased a few Washington, D.C.-based CBPR projects, one of which focused on infant mortality, a huge topic in Milwaukee. The speakers emphasized the need to treat these research relationships like personal relationships that should be nurtured over time. They advised that financial challenges should be discussed openly with the community partners…a wise lesson.    

Promoting sexual health: going beyond the usual suspects

I was super late to this session because I was participating in a conference call about a tuberculosis cluster. When I arrived, groups were practicing identifying root causes of public health issues and potential structural interventions. I coaxed my group into using an example relevant to my work: health issues within the Hmong community, specifically access to mental health services in Milwaukee. We listed root causes of this issue: lack of transportation, language barriers, lack of Hmong mental health providers, gender roles, stigma, etc., and thought about structural-level, that is, big picture policy or community-level changes. The facilitator encouraged us to think beyond education campaigns and the dissemination of information—it was certainly a challenge.

Creating conditions of empowerment, behavior change and wellbeing among women of low socioeconomic status

Behavior change is one of the most difficult areas of public health I’ve witnessed. Even when changing behavior can greatly positively impact one’s health, it is still a major challenge. This session was quite useful—we learned about the components of motivational interviewing. A professor from the UW-Madison School of Nursing, Diane Lauver, spoke about the self-determination theory (this has a lot to do with motivation) as it relates to community-based participatory research. The premise of this type of motivational interviewing: for behavior change to occur, you cannot tell people what to do. You must ask people what they think about a problem or situation, assess their readiness to deal with the issue, allow them to develop realistic goals, and help them identify resources to form an action plan. We practiced motivational interviewing in small groups using case studies. It was a great exercise—we all found it difficult to not tell the “client” what we thought she should do! 

Female condoms: Ringing in the New Year with Empowerment and Education

Female condoms are an interesting topic to me because they are frequently billed as a key to women’s empowerment in global health contexts where women have little control over their sexual health. But…I’ve always been a bit skeptical about the feasibility of this solution. After this dynamic presentation, however, I am officially an advocate (and cheerleader) for female condoms. Check out the excellent campaign website.

Health Impact Assessment: Wisconsin Capacity Building Initiative

When Fellow Paula Tran Inzeo looks at buildings, highways, agriculture, and housing, she sees public health. Her work with Health Impact Assessments gives public health a seat at the table when it comes to planning and understanding impacts of policies and projects.

She writes, "The health impacts of the built environment are a growing concern for Wisconsin’s communities. While Wisconsin’s public health agencies have some existing capacity, a clear and coordinated strategy for keeping public health at the forefront of urban growth and land-use policies is lacking. The Bureau of Environmental and Occupational Health (BEOH) within the Division of Public Health (DPH) is integrated into a number of collaborative projects involving land redevelopment initiatives and has established excellent working relationships with state agencies, internal and external to public health. Therefore, BEOH applied for funding from the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials to continue development and implementation of strategies to engage with local partners, build capacity, and address the health consequences of built environment projects and policies at the state and local level through Health Impact Assessment (HIA).

HIA is a combination of procedures, methods and tools that systematically judges the potential, and sometimes unintended, effects of a policy, plan, program or project on the health of a population and the distribution of those effects within the population. HIA identifies appropriate actions to manage those effects. HIA includes five major steps: screening, scooping, assessment, reporting, and monitoring.

Screening	Determines the need and value of a HIA
Scoping	Determines which health impacts to evaluate, methods for analysis, and a workplan
Assessment	Provides: 1) a profile of existing health conditions, 2) evaluation of potential health impacts, 3) strategies to manage identified adverse health impacts
Reporting	Includes: 1) development of the HIA report and 2) communication of findings & recommendations
Monitoring	Tracks: 1) impacts on decision-making processes and the decision and 2) impacts of the decision on health determinants

BEOH learned a great deal from our efforts to build capacity statewide to integrate health into the decision-making processes where such conversations had not previously been had. Below is a summary of the key lessons learned which could be considered recommendations for best practices for HIA capacity building at the state level.

1)       Successful development of a Health Impact Assessment Program at the state level must build off of existing programs or projects as funding for HIA projects is fleeting and often inadequate to support independent staff positions. Program staff must be grounded in other areas.

2)       Capacity building efforts are enhanced when promotion of the HIA framework can be erected in unison with existing initiatives and with the support of functional, interdisciplinary groups.

3)       Establishing connections and information exchange with other states or organizations building HIA programs or implementing the HIA framework, such as other ASTHO grantees, serves as an excellent resource for linking with new partners, circumventing barriers, and leveraging efforts.

4)       With trainings as the centerpiece of capacity building efforts, develop an engaging curriculum that can be catered to the issues and concerns of participants’ communities. Trainings must be introduced and advertised well via multiple marketing outlets, including surveys, listservs, conferences seminars, and poster sessions. However, the value of personal contact can not be underestimated.

5)       Trainings must be practical and relevant for participants, and sensitive to the potential limitations of rural health departments or understaffed organizations or agencies. Scaffolding the HIA framework and highlighting resources within the community that can alleviate time or staffing restraints increases the perceived feasibility of employing HIA.

6)       Multidisciplinary training experiences are preferable to targeting only LHDs. Participants should represent diversity in professional fields of expertise but also in level of management.

7)       Participation in HIA capacity building efforts and conducting HIAs requires managerial or supervisory staff to buy-in to the initiative. Since current staff resources for HIA must draw upon existing programs, upper-level consent for use of time and resources for HIA is imperative.

8)       It is critical to capitalize on training momentum by establishing and maintaining regular communication with emerging HIA practitioners."

Allied Wellness Cooperative Receives Grant

Thanks to Fellow Katherine Vaughn-Jehring, the Allied Wellness Center of Madison, Wisc., has received a Wisconsin Partnership Program grant. According to the awards web page, "This grant engages community members and the five core organizations of the Allied Wellness Center to investigate the best route to organizing a social cooperative that will address the social determinants of health."

Fellow Raisa Koltun's Community-Academic Partnership Grant Funded

Second-year fellow Raisa Koltun has helped her community placement site, CORE/El Centro, receive a Wisconsin Partnership Program grant. The project, "Public Will Building to Reduce Obesity in the Latino Community of Milwaukee" focuses on the socioeconomic and environmental determinants of health, specifically obesity. 

Read her executive summary:

Proyecto Salud is a grassroots collaborative project of two agencies, CORE/El Centro and Aurora Walker’s Point Community Clinic, located on the south side of Milwaukee. Proyecto Salud works with a largely Spanish-speaking, Latino immigrant population. Obesity is a nationwide epidemic, but has a much higher prevalence in the Latino community. This accounts for large disparities in health outcomes, including heart disease and diabetes. In this community, there are many programs and interventions available to fight the epidemic, however a vast majority of them focus on altering individual behaviors related to diet and exercise. Although this is a critical aspect of the solution, it does not take into consideration the many levels of influence on health behaviors – especially socioeconomic and environmental factors.

The goal of the proposed projecct is to increase awareness and build public will of Latino community members to address socioeconomicc and environmental determinants of obesity. This work will build on previous research conducted within this community regarding food and the community nutrition environment, by strengthening the evidence-base through the inclusion of community members’ experiences.

The main activities of this project are:

1    Create new partnerships be etween academic colleagues, Proyecto Salud and community members.

2    Hold guided group discussions, grounded in the public will building framework, with community members around the impact of socioeconomic and environmental determinants of obesity.

3    Bring together a Community Action Board who will analyze the data from the group discussions.

4    From the analyzed data, CAB will create a community-driven, evidence-based action plan.

We are requesting $50,000 to carry out this 15-month project beginning in June 2011, which will result in the following outcomes:

1    Strong community-academic partnership and increased CAB cohesion

2    Increased understanding of f community experiences regarding social and environmental determinants of obesity.

3    Increased CAB cohesion.

4. Compiled action plan The World Health Organization states: “The increased incorporation of community engagement and social participation in policy processes helps to ensure fair decision-making on health equity issues.” This speaks to the need for community-led advocacy efforts and is the basis for this project. Furthermore, most efforts in the community to fight obesity center around individual behavior change. A large body of evidence points to the fact that socioeconomic and environmental factors also play a significant role in health outcomes. This project develops the base of support for community-led advocacy efforts around socioeconoomic and environmental factors that contribute to obesity rates in the Latino community of Milwaukee. This project, in the long-term, aims to reduce health disparities by building strong community partnerships. This project supports the following WPP guiding principles: prevention, collaboration, responsiveness and sustainability. Furthermore, we will contribute to the State Health Plan, Healthiest Wisconsin 2020, by advancing the following three focus areas: Adequate, appropriate, and safe food and nutrition; Chronic disease prevention and management; and Collaborative partnerships for community health improvement.

New Partner Management Option Implemented for Controlling Sexually Transmitted Disease in Wisconsin

Wisconsin has introduced expedited partner therapy (EPT) legislation for more than a decade. EPT - which allows sex partners of patients diagnosed with sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) to receive medication or a prescription without a prior medical evaluation- is considered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to be a useful option to prevent persistent or re-current chlamydia or gonorrhea infection when other partner management strategies are impractical or unsuccessful. In Wisconsin there are more bacterial STDs reported than all other reportable communicable diseases combined. Over 30,000 cases were reported in Wisconsin in 2008, according to the STD Control Program at the Wisconsin Division of Public Health, and the rate of STDs has increased 33% in Wisconsin from 1999 to 2008.

As the Department of Health Services prepared to deliver research and guidance related to the re-introduction of EPT legislation, Marisa Stanley, a first-year Fellow working in the Bureau of Communicable Disease and Emergency Response, was called upon to help. With her preceptor, former Fellow Casey Schumann, AIDS/HIV Program Director and Fellowship mentor, Jim Vergeront, and the staff of the STD Control Program, Marisa researched legislation from other states, helped draft legislative language and organized testimony for the legislative hearings related to the public health initiative. She worked with the STD Control Program to develop educational documents for health care providers, patients and pharmacists. With successful passage of the legislation in 2010, Marisa is now working to ensure appropriate implementation and evaluation of the program.

Recipe: Vegan Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Cookies

As featured at our December Fellow meeting:

Vegan Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Cookies
2 cups sugar
1 cup margarine
1 (15.5 oz) can solid pumpkin puree
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
4 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
12 oz. vegan semisweet chocolate chips (regular chocolate chips work too if you're not a vegan)

1. preheat oven to 375
2. cream the sugar, margarine, pumpkin and vanilla together. Mix until light and well combined.
3. mix the flour, baking soda and ground cinnamon. Stir the flour mixture into the creamed mixture. Mix until combined. Stir in the cholocate chips.
4. Drop by teaspoons onto an ungreased baking sheet. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes or until set. Let cookies cool on a rack.
**Makes 8-10 dozen**

Article: How to Fail at Grant Writing

For a funny (yet insightful) look at the don'ts of grant writing, check out this article from The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Opportunity: UW Global Health Initiative RFP

Interested in global health? Check out UW's Global Health Initiative Request for Proposals. Proposals are due on June 1, 2011.

Loren Galvao, MD, MPH [Preceptor]

What is your role in the WI Population Health Fellowship program?
Loren Galvao, MD, MPH, joined the preceptor ranks in August 2010. “I believe it is a very exciting role because I get to see people grow in their career plans. For me, it is very gratifying to be working with a Fellow and develop with them new initiatives, new research, and publications.”

 
What inspired you to become involved with the Fellowship program?
“I am involved in the Population Health Sciences Dept; I have had an appointment as an honorary Fellow since 2005 so I have been working with other investigators there. I am also one of the Associate Directors for the SHOW [Survey of the Health of Wisconsin] project— a statewide population health project since 2005. I was contacted by the Fellow also who is very interested in global health. I work globally and locally—this Fellow is also interested in working globally and locally so I think we have a lot in common; it was a good match.”

What are a few highlights of your background in public health?
“I’m a physician, my medical degree is from Brazil and I also did training in OB/GYN early in my career. After that, my work has been very focused in public health and global health. For the past 20 years I have been working mostly in the area of reproductive health, HIV prevention, family planning, maternal and child health. So my research has evolved into a wide range of areas.

Early in my career I thought I would be a gynecologist. But then I moved to the U.S. and became interested in public health. My plan was to go back to Brazil and practice OB/GYN…but after I completed my degree in public health at the University of Michigan, my views changed a bit. However, even when I was in Brazil working in obstetrics and gynecology wards in large hospitals, I saw girls 12 and 13 delivering babies or having abortions—some of them would die at a young age due to abortions and complications. I wanted to work more to prevent these sorts of things from happening. So, I already had view of public health. Also, in my training in Brazil as a medical student, I had the opportunity to do a lot in community health and public health. Our university was very strongly focused on social medicine. So I had an opportunity as a medical student to already see these kinds of broad approaches—public health, social medicine. We also looked at the broader determinants of health because it is a country that has major disparities—economic and healthcare access. I grew up in that environment where I felt I needed to address these broader issues that are associated with health. When I came to the U.S. to do a Master’s degree in public health, I felt that my clinical background was helpful, but I really wanted to focus more on the public health. Most of my career has been public health but the clinical background helps, especially in global health. It was something that grew—through Master’s in public health, working in international organizations and now being in academia, I feel I can connect these worlds—of international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and academia.

I have worked with the Population Council in Brazil researching family planning and HIV; conducting national assessments, qualitative studies and a randomized trial comparing female and male condoms in Brazil and several other studies on the female condom. Before that, I worked with Save the Children where I was mostly involved in global health programs; my work focused a lot on maternal and child health. At that time I worked with several countries in Latin America, Asia and Africa providing support to programs that implemented child survival, maternal health and family planning. The main areas where I worked were southern Africa, Bangladesh, and Bolivia. To date I have worked in 19 countries.

Since 1996, my research interests have really focused more on HIV prevention. When I came to the U.S. in 2001, I still was doing consulting for international organizations. I spent two years doing consulting for WHO, Family Health International, and the Population Health Council, mostly in the areas of HIV prevention, providing support and advice for studies.

In 2003 I joined the UW-Milwaukee Center for Cultural Diversity and Global Health and started developing research in Africa. After that, I also joined the Center for Urban Population Health as the Associate Director for Community Partnerships. So my work is really balanced between the global and the local. I divide my time and it’s a real challenge sometimes to do both global and local public health research—but it is possible and very rewarding.”

What are you working on right now?
“My major project internationally is an NIH-funded project where I’m a co-Principal Investigator in a 5-year study entitled “Pathways.” In this study, we are examining the pathways between HIV, poverty, and food security. This is in collaboration with the Medical College of Wisconsin and CARE-Malawi. CARE is a large humanitarian organization working in about 72 countries globally. This project is a large evaluation of a development intervention; the major components are microfinance, sustainable agriculture, and health. We are evaluating the long-term effects of these interventions on health outcomes including HIV, nutrition, reproductive health, gender, empowerment, and community and individual behaviors. It’s a multi-level evaluation. It’s important because there are few studies doing such a controlled, quasi-experimental design. You have a lot of evaluations for international NGOs that are limited in study design or scientific rigor.  As we are reviewing the literature, we have found few evaluations using a quasi-experimental design.  So it’s a very exciting study—this is the one I’m really focusing on globally.

In Wisconsin I’m very involved in SHOW—a major population-based cross-sectional household study that will be done over many years. One important thing about this study is that it forms an infrastructure for ancillary studies so there are opportunities for other researchers to join and design, for instance, community-specific surveys (“mini-SHOWs”) or “before and after” community-based intervention studies. I’m very interested, either in U.S. or globally, in studies that have effects and impacts on the community. Studies such as SHOW and Pathways provide an opportunity for others to join—other researchers, Fellows, and graduate students, to come and really sustain these kinds of studies. I am very pleased to have a Fellow working with us. She is involved in a community advisory board to the SHOW—it’s a small pilot study where we are looking at how we can use SHOW findings to interest communities to use this data to develop community action. So, the Fellow is involved in global and local projects. Hopefully there will be more Fellows in the future who are interested in this connection with the local and global. The U.S. is part of the global…but sometimes there is a separation. I believe there has been more interest in global health in the past decade in the U.S.; many universities are starting to expand their programs in global health so hopefully the universities in Wisconsin will expand their work in global health. I believe Fellows, graduate students, and other researchers are the key for that. The young people who are coming who are excited about it—they are key for this, to really keep this going…We’re trying to build a global health research team in Milwaukee—very exciting!”

Do you have any advice for those interested in the Fellowship?
“It’s important to have some experience in the community. It’s very important to have that connection where you deal directly with people—otherwise it becomes very theoretical. If you’re interested in global health, go to another country and spend at least a few months working with an international organization. Or if your focus is local—do something in the U.S. working directly with people. Even if a Fellow is going to focus on biostatistics or epidemiology or areas such as those, the Fellow would then have the experience with people in the communities and face the problems that affect the people in those communities. I believe this is essential.”

Do you have a public health role model/hero?
“There are so many that are wonderful people! One person I admire a lot is Dr. Helene Gayle—she is the president of CARE-USA. Her career is really fantastic—she’s worked with the CDC, Gates Foundation, and now CARE. She’s doing a wonderful job there and has been a leader both in the organization but also globally—she has been supportive of our project in Malawi. She is a person who really has a strong passion for global health and has been doing wonderful work.

Dr. Paul Farmer also on the academic side is a wonderful role model with all his work in Haiti and globally and looking really broadly at HIV and other health issues.”

What is one public health-related activity in your community that you are proud about?
“I believe there are many large studies that are published in academic journals and they are kept as…almost a secret by academics—they don’t really get to the communities. The way academia is set up is that the researchers have to publish their findings in peer-reviewed journals and books, but many times it doesn’t get to the real people—the lay people in the community. So, in working with SHOW for all these years, I felt that I would really like to see the findings get to the communities.

Milwaukee is one of the cities with major disparities in the U.S.—poverty levels are very high compared with other cities—fourth in terms of poverty. I believe SHOW is an extraordinary study that has a lot to give. I wouldn’t like to wait until we publish all the findings—it doesn’t get to those communities in need. So, the idea of the SHOW Community Advisory Board (CAB) came about in discussions with the community organizations here including the Social Development Commission (SDC), which is an organization that is also interested in addressing poverty and health issues. So I think it was a good marriage of academia and a local social service organization to look at research in a different way—really trying to translate those findings of a large and very important population health study to the communities.

And the idea is very simple: to bring people together who are clients of the SDC who are interested in improving health in their communities to discuss these findings as they are available. The preliminary findings from SHOW are becoming available now, so the idea is that they look at these findings through their own eyes—we have about 12 members—in sessions throughout the year where we discuss health and the ethics of research—this is very important given the history of African Americans with ethical issues and research; many people in the community are afraid of research, many don’t trust research, they are tired of being “researched.” The idea is to bring people together who are affected by major health disparities and look at the data and then from there, interpret the findings through their own eyes—not through the eyes of researchers only—and see how they could use the findings either to affect policies or to use the data for simple interventions they could do in the community, like community action.

Also they (the CAB) are serving as an advisory group on how we can disseminate the data to the community in a way that is understandable and it makes sense—that really reaches the community. For example, most researchers believe that publishing is enough. So we ask how can we make the data “talk,” and be meaningful for those communities and really affect change? There are many levels of affecting change—obviously it is very important to publish in the peer-reviewed literature and books but there are other ways to reach the community. It could be through media, art, songs, local journals, or local newspapers. I also believe it is important to let the data “talk” and can bring the real histories of people through narratives. Sometimes if you just present numbers it is not attractive to communities. We are already hearing from our SHOWCAB that they would like to see more visual dissemination of data. We are in the process of getting their advice at this point. We’ll have more recommendations next year but I believe it will be very interesting to see the inputs of the African American community. Hopefully there will be other researchers interested in this and it can multiply to other communities in Wisconsin. Since SHOW is statewide, there could be other communities who are interested in getting data and replicating this model for community action and really contributing to effect change.”

What is one public health achievement you think will happen in the next 25 years? What is one you would like to see in the next 25 years?
“Well, since I work in the area of HIV/AIDS, I would like to see a vaccine for HIV…and hopefully in 25 years we will have one. Before that, given that I have been working in primary prevention research with female and male condom—I would like to see a microbicide that is user-friendly for women, safe and low cost. Before we have a vaccine, this could be a great technology. I’m very interested in user-friendly, safe, effective and low-cost technologies for reproductive health that could improve women’s lives.”
 
Any closing thoughts?
“The Fellowship is a very important program. I would really like to see more Fellows interested in the connection between the local and the global—that the local is part of the global. So hopefully we’ll have more Fellows in the future in Wisconsin who are interested in this kind of work. I believe this program has enormous potential in public health and global health by bringing the passion of young investigators and people who will be doing this kind of research to the field!”

Matthew Landis

When did you complete your Fellowship?

I completed my Fellowship in 2007

Where did you complete your Fellowship?

WI DHS Bureau of Health Information and Policy

What are you doing now, and where?

I graduated law school in 2010 with a Health Care Law and Compliance focus

How did the Fellowship contribute to your current situation?

The Fellowship solidified my desire to persue a legal education and bridge the gap between law policy and practice.

Do you have any advice for current Fellows or those interested in the Fellowship?

Take time to explore, but also have some goals developed that you want to work toward. It took me about 6 months to meet people, become a face people would associate with the position, and land on a project that I thought would enable me to meet the goals I set for myself (like give a presentation as a program representative, publish a paper, or manage an aspect of program development, implementation, or evaluation).

What types of projects are you currently involved in?

Currently I am a Health Care Compliance Consultant for a University of Minnesota affiliated Federally Qualified Health Center.

What are your main areas of interest within public health?

Objective approaches to measure key aspects of quality and compliance in health care settings, eliminating racial and ethnic disparities in health outcomes, developing multidisciplinary collaborations to address emerging policy issues, health reform.

Marisa Stanley

When did you begin your Fellowship?

July 1, 2009

Where is your Fellowship?

Department of Health Services in the Division of Public Health and Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Epidemiology Center

What were you up to prior to your Fellowship?

Before graduate school, I was a research associate for a biotech company in Minneapolis, MN. During graduate school, I worked for the Minnesota Department of Health in the Immunization Program and was an intern with the Ryan White Program at Hennepin County.

What inspired you to take the Fellowship route rather than a different type of job/school/etc.?

I was/still am very interested in public health policy and wanted to explore and gain experience in that area. I especially like this fellowship because it is self guided. I can choose my own projects and explore many aspects of public health rather then being constrained by a specific description.

What are your main areas of interest within public health?

Policy, infectious diseases, and Tribal health

Do you have any advice for those interested in the Fellowship?

My advice is to apply. When else in your career are you going to have designated mentors to help you succeed and learn, the ability to pursue your own interests, and find where you want to be in public health?

Kate Konkle

Fellowship

I completed the fellowship at the Division of Public Health Western Regional Office in Eau Claire.

I am now working for the UW Population Health Institute. I am a Program Manager for the Healthy Wisconsin Leadership Institute (HWLI), and I also work with the Community Engagement Team for the Mobilizing Action Toward Community Health (MATCH), also referred to as the County Health Rankings project. 

I feel really lucky to be able to work and collaborate with so many wonderful people at PHI, and work on projects that are both fun and meaningful. 

As a program manager with HWLI, I spend a lot of time on the Community Teams Program, developing curriculum around coalition building, collaborative leadership and community health improvement processes. I also provide technical assistance to the teams participating in the program. I love still getting to go out into communities and see the amazing work being done, and the passion and commitment for making communities healthier.

I am excited to work with the MATCH project since it offers an opportunity to work with communities around the country. I hope that I can both share some successes that we’ve had in Wisconsin with folks in other states, and learn from them and bring their success stories and lessons learned back to Wisconsin.

The fellowship was an invaluable experience, and absolutely is a huge part of why I am now working with HWLI and MATCH. When I graduated from my MPH program, I really wasn’t sure in what area of public health I wanted to focus. The fellowship gave me an opportunity to explore a few areas that were of interest, and introduced me to others. I had never considered public health systems work as an area of the field that might interest me, but through the fellowship I discovered that this is really where my passion is. Working to improve how the public health system functions is an important and sometimes overlooked part of making sure we can be successful. I find this work to be challenging but really rewarding.

 

The fellowship also offered a unique opportunity to have a leadership role on projects. Had I been an entry level employee in a public health agency, these opportunities would have been less likely. This also allowed me to build a network with public health leaders across the state, which was probably one of the greatest benefits of the fellowship.

If I have any advice for the current fellows, it would be to be a good self-advocate - make sure you are getting, and taking advantage of opportunities that are meaningful and valuable to you. And network, network network. Often who you know can be just as important as what you know, and when it comes time to find a job post fellowship, having lots of advocates in your corner will be a huge asset!

Other topics:

Hmmmm….do I have any public health heroes. When I was exploring public health as a career option, I read Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder, and Paul Farmer became one of my public health heroes. But since starting to work in the field, I feel like I’ve met so many people working every day in Wisconsin who have become mentors and also heroes. People are care very much about their community and seem to have a tireless energy for making it a healthier place; people who do so much with very few resources. I think heroes are people that inspire us to work harder and be better, and some the people I’ve had the opportunity to work with are definitely heroes as well as colleagues and mentors.

Amanda Schultz

I completed my fellowship with UW Population Health Sciences July 07- June 09.

During my fellowship, I worked with the City of Milwaukee Health Department on various planning and evaluation projects and CORE/El Centro´s Proyecto Salud, organizing communities around Latino health on Milwaukee´s South side.I am currently an international volunteer with Asociacion Mujeres Defensoras de la Vida in Choluteca, Honduras. Here I work with women to improve the wellbeing of individuals, families, and communities through female leadership, political engagement, and strengthening of local economies. I feel that much of my experience in the fellowship has prepared me for the work that I am doing here by providing me with a strong base in community organizing, group facilitation, and planning. One of the primary projects I am currently involved in is a county wide effort to unite NGO and government programs and improve efficiency in preventing childhood malnourishment. I am also working with the Hesperian Foundation to create a culturally competent digital health commons in Spanish, where health workers will be able to access and create health literacy materials specific to the needs of their communities. Similarly, I rely primarily on electronic sources of news to stay informed. My electronic subscription to the American Public Health Journal has been a great way to stay up to date and plugged in…when I have time to read!   

If I were to wish for a major public health achievement in the next 25 years, it would be a significant reduction in the income disparities between classes and a reduction in poverty on both a national and international scale. To me, poverty is one of the largest root causes of the public health concerns we face both as a nation and a world. In the next 25 years I think we will see a breaking down of race barriers (especially as whites will become the minority) and an increasing focus on collective efforts to address social determinants of health. Let´s get to work!

Melissa Olson

When did you complete your Fellowship?

I completed my fellowship from July 2006 through June 2008.

Where did you complete your Fellowship?

I was in the Southern Regional Office of the Division of Public Health.

What are you doing now, and where?

I am now the epidemiologist/evaluator for the Oral Health Program in the Division of Public Health.

How did the Fellowship contribute to your current situation?

The fellowship allowed me to work on a variety of projects, which gave me experience in some new areas and also helped me to build some relationships here at DPH and at the local health departments that are useful when looking for a permanent position.

Do you have any advice for current Fellows or those interested in the Fellowship?

It is a great opportunity to broaden or strengthen your experience and skills before looking for a permanent position. Take advantage of the flexibility of the program to make sure that you are getting everything that you need or would like out of the experience.

What types of projects are you currently involved in?

I provide both surveillance and evaluation expertise to the Oral Health Program.  We just recently completed our Burden of Oral Disease in Wisconsin report, which is a compilation of all of our most recently available data on oral disease, access to care, prevention programs, risk behaviors, education, and workforce.

We are now starting to do an elderly survey. This is an exciting project because it is a population with high disease burden and for which we have little or no data. We have selected a random sample of nursing homes throughout the state as well as senior meal sites. Now trained and calibrated dental hygienists will be going out to the sites and doing an oral health screening.

What are your main areas of interest within public health?

I have always had many broad interests in public health from chronic disease to infectious disease. However, I am much more interested in epidemiology than in policy. I have also always been very interested in women’s health and in international public health.

What is one public health-related activity in your community that you are proud about?

One of my favorite projects during my fellowship was working with the Beloit Infant Mortality Coalition. I grew up in Beloit, so it was nice to be involved in a much needed project in my hometown.

What is one public health achievement you think will happen in the next 25 years? What is one you would like to see in the next 25 years?

There are a lot of achievements that I would like to see happen in the next 25 years, which will happen, I’m not sure. Regarding oral health I would like to see that everyone has access to comprehensive and affordable dental care. Currently people covered under Medicaid have coverage for dental care, but are unable to find providers to take them or they have to drive great distances or wait a long period of time. There are limited places for uninsured adults to get care for free or at a reduced rate, which often results in unnecessary emergency room visits.

Another area that I would like to see great progress in and I think we will is in health disparities. While I don’t think that they will be eliminated in 25 years, I think that we will make progress since all of the work that we do now looks at where the disparate burden of disease lies so that we can appropriately target our programs and resources.

Carrie Henning-Smith

When did you complete your Fellowship?
2007 - 2009

Where did you complete your Fellowship?
In Milwaukee. I split my time between the Milwaukee County Department on Aging and S.E.T. Ministries.

What are you doing now, and where?
I took a year off after the fellowship to live and work in Shanghai, China. Since returning to the U.S., I have moved to Minneapolis, where I am starting a PhD program in Health Services Research, Policy, and Administration at the University of Minnesota.

How did the Fellowship contribute to your current situation?
It had a huge impact on my current situation. It equipped me with rich skills and experience. More than that, though, it was a time to ask questions and get involved, which helped me know that I wanted to go back to school (to start to seek answers to some of those questions) and definitely helped me in the application process!

Do you have any advice for current Fellows or those interested in the Fellowship?
Make the Fellowship what you want it to be. It's an incredible opportunity to seek out projects that you're interested in and to try out all sorts of things. No other job would allow you that much freedom, so take advantage of it and get involved in as much as you can!
 

What are your main areas of interest within public health?
The social determinants of health, aging and the life course, mental health...

Katarina Grande

 When did you begin your Fellowship?

August 2010

Where is your Fellowship?

I spend half my time at the Milwaukee Health Department in 2-month rotations throughout the divisions, and half my time at the Center for Urban Population Health.

What were you up to prior to your Fellowship?

I was finishing my MPH at the University of Minnesota, focusing on global environmental health and infectious disease. Prior to that, I was an AmeriCorps volunteer in Washington, D.C.

What inspired you to take the Fellowship route rather than a different type of job/school/etc.?

My interests are far too broad to settle on a particular job. The Fellowship seemed like the ideal combination of academia, practical work experience, and community-based service.

What are your main areas of interest within public health?

I love global health, especially in the context of infectious disease.

What is one thing (or many!) you are working on right now in your fellowship?

At the Milwaukee Health Department, I’m currently working with the Milwaukee Consortium for Hmong Health—a community-academic partnership organization—to develop a community needs assessment for the Milwaukee Hmong community. The goal is to identify issues affecting the Hmong community so that the Consortium can integrate related resources into its breast and cervical cancer screening programs. 

At the Center for Urban Population Health, I’m involved with a project examining the effect of broad, community-wide interventions (microfinance and sustainable agriculture) on health, specifically HIV risk. This project is underway in rural Malawi and aims to close some of the gap between NGO programming and rigorous evaluation research. Recently, two members of the field team visited Milwaukee (and the U.S.) for the first time. We had a fantastic time sharing our cultures and gleefully examining Google Earth’s ability to create maps with hut-level detail—quite useful for finding the thousands of households involved in the study.

Do you have any advice for those interested in the Fellowship?

Though I’m new at this Fellowship thing, I can already see that I’m going to get experience in a lot of areas. If you’re like me and have a lot of interests, you can’t go wrong with the Fellowship pathway.

Who is one of the coolest public health people you’ve met?

Perhaps Ram Krishnan, a rainwater harvesting expert based in Minnesota who works in India. I’m not sure if he considers his work public health, but making clean water accessible and available to entire communities certainly qualifies as public health.

What is one public health-related activity in your community that you are proud about?

I learn about groundbreaking public health activities in Milwaukee daily. This city is pretty neat in that regard. I’m especially impressed by the academic-community partnerships everywhere. One of the projects I work on at CUPH involves a Community Advisory Board (CAB) that meets to interpret data from the statewide Survey of the Health of Wisconsin (SHOW). The CAB talks about what the data means to them and how to best communicate the data to their communities. Next up: the CAB will figure out what types of action it wants to take to respond to the data.

What is one public health achievement you would like to see in the next 25 years?

Simple. A combination TB/malaria/HIV vaccine and a method of delivering this vaccine to people in every corner of the world, especially in failed states. I would also like to see infrastructure for clean water delivery to every community worldwide.

Katherine Vaughn-Jehring

When did you begin your Fellowship? 

July 2010

Where is your Fellowship?

Office of Policy and Practice Alignment at the WI Department of Health Services  &  Allied Wellness Center [see description of Center below!]

The Allied Wellness Cooperative:

The Allied Wellness Co-op’s vision is that all people have access to holistic wellness: healthy minds, bodies, spirits, families, communities, and access to money and education.

The Co-op is a changing and open place, owned and run by the people where everyone is excited about what is going on and they find ways to share their talents. A place where basic needs are met so dreams and goals can be found. Residents from the Allied and Dunn’s Marsh neighborhood want to build a place where they can work together to strengthen people, families and the community.  The Allied Wellness Co-op is a way to promote individual and community development. 

A cooperative is a member-owned and run organization that benefits all its members. People, businesses and organizations can join and work together to build:

1. Job training and support that works for everyone

2. Community programs for and by members

3. A support and development center for everyone

 

What were you up to prior to your Fellowship? 

Master in Public Health and Master in Public Affairs degrees from University of Wisconsin - Madison. Worked for Gilda's Club Madison and then the Wisconsin Comprehensive Cancer Control Program throughout grad school.

What inspired you to take the Fellowship route rather than a different type of job/school/etc.? 

-Opportunity to better understand the many different aspects of public health work. -Diversity of work, opportunity to work with leaders in public health. 

-Ability to work in areas where I had an interest.  Placement at two sites is exciting and great for me.

What are your main areas of interest within public health?

-Partnership Building

-Bringing non-traditional organizations into public health discussions
-Community organizing with state-wide "communities"

What is one thing (or many!) you are working on right now in your fellowship? 

Implementation of Healthiest Wisconsin 2020: the state's public health plan.
 
What is one public health achievement you would like to see in the next 25 years?

Changes in laws and social norms around alcohol. 

How to use this blog

Welcome to the Wisconsin Population Health Service Fellowship Blog. The aims of this blog are to:

• Keep people with ties to the Fellowship connected to one another

• Showcase Fellow, Alumni, and Faculty research and projects

• Provide a venue for those interested in the Fellowship to get a better idea of what it’s all about

• Share stories, insights, and lessons related to public health          

Thank you for helping to build this blog. At the top of this page are tabs linking to profiles of current Fellows, alumni Fellows, and Fellowship staff and faculty. On the left side of the page are collections of blogs, resources, and journals read by your peers.

If you have questions for current and alumni Fellows, please post a comment or send an email [see About Me section under the list of Journals].

Sara Soka

I began my fellowship in July 2009, and was placed at the Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity Program within the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. Before the fellowship, I completed a MS in Population Health Sciences at the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health.

What makes public health as a field so attractive to me is that generalists fit so well within it. With some exceptions, you need to have curiosity and knowledge about a broad range of subjects, and skills all over the map to do it well. You’re constantly learning – you have to. Almost every public health issue involves questions of human behavior and motivation. What else could be so fascinating, challenging, and rewarding as trying to understand why people do what they do, and creatively finding ways to make it easier for people to make healthy choices?

My main areas of interest within public health during my fellowship have been the nutrition and built environment. But one area I’d like to explore more is public health communication. Nothing impresses me more than when I see a complex topic explained so the general public can understand it, but still experience its nuances. There are so many forms of media available now, all ways to reach people with health messaging – what an opportunity for the field.